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Resource Identification Initiative
Overview of the Resource Identification Initiative


The Resource Identification Initiative (RII) aims to promote research resource identification, discovery, and reuse. The RII introduced the concept of Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs) - persistent and unique identifiers for referencing a research resource. A critical goal of the RII is the widespread adoption of RRIDs to cite biological resources such as antibodies, cell lines, organisms or tools in the biomedical literature and other places that reference their generation or use.

RRIDs use established community identifiers where they exist. To ensure they are recognizable, unique, and traceable, identifiers are prefixed with "RRID:", followed by a second tag that indicates the source authority that provided it (e.g. "AB" for the Antibody Registry, "CVCL" for the Cellosaurus, "MGI" for Mouse Genome Informatics, "SCR" for the SciCrunch Registry).

Examples:

Antibody: RRID:AB_2178887
Cell Line: RRID:CVCL_0033
Organism: RRID:MGI:3840442
Tool: RRID:SCR_007358

The RRI has put in place a Resource Identification Portal to access these RRIDs. The Cellosaurus is the cell line resource for this important initiative.

Note that, as you can see in the above examples, the RRID for a cell line is identical to the Cellosaurus accession number prefixed by "RRID:" See also our FAQ#18.

For more information on the RII and RRIDs see:
Bandrowski A., Brush M., Grethe J.S. et al. The Resource Identification Initiative: A cultural shift in publishing. F1000Research 4:134(2015).
DOI:10.12688/f1000research.6555.2